alt Hacker NewsOf course it's arguable. You make it sound like founders perform some jedi mind-trick to take money from others. Here's what actually happens. Investors put in initial money because it's a win-win (they get an expected return, founders get starting capital). Employees join because it's a win-win (they get a salary, health, equity, other perks; founders get a workforce). Customers pay cash because it's a win-win (they get a product or service they want, the business gets money). At no point is someone being held down and forced to hand money to someone else.
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That's not quite true, the police hold me down and lock me in a cell if I don't hand money to a landlord.
They don't hold me down and force me to hand money to a landlord, mind, they just lock me in a cell if I don't, so maybe it doesn't meet your standard of proof.
I am making a meta-argument, and I do think that it’s inarguable.
My argument is this: the core disagreement here is about the allocation of resources between labor and capital.
I’m right. It is.
That doesn’t mean I have settled the argument about what those allocations should be which nobody has, it’s a core organizational element of politics.
But I think his argument is bullshit. It’s a purposeful misdirection because it refuses to recognize the terms of the discussion at all.
Health is not a perk but an inelastic demand: a threat to withhold health is a threat of physical harm, and a negotiation in which one party's physical health is on the line is quantitatively but not qualitatively different from a negotiation held with a gun to that party's head.